Horton Played It Fast and Loose

Cockerville, New Mexico

1888

The hotel’s front desk clerk gazes sleepily at the reporter’s business card. He checks him over, thinking the bespeckled, slightly built man with the slate gray eyes could be his twin.

“Joshua Elm, eswire…”

“That’s Esquire. Is Cade Horton upstairs? I’ve been sent to interview him.”

The clerk yawns. “Yep. Room 2 B. Second floor, second door. They been up there scurryin’ about since five a.m. The lady deputy already come down to fetch Horton’s breakfast. He’s a humdinger. Can charm the skin off a rattler. But he’s so crooked, he could swallow nails and spit out corkscrews.”

Joshua pauses outside the room’s open door.

A broad-shouldered, wiry man with a large blonde mustache trains a shotgun on him.

Joshua’s hands shoot upward, and he quickly identifies himself.

A portly, frizzy-haired woman checks him for weapons.

Cade Horton sits on the bed, his posture upright like a man of breeding, even though he’s had little education.

A tad over six feet tall with a lean, lithe build and a disarming, ice blue stare, Cade Horton cuts a rogueish figure in an embroidered vest with a pressed white shirt and red tie.

Although handcuffs encumber his hands, Cade manages to cut into a plate of steak and eggs. “Be glad to talk to the press. Say, girlie, can you set a chair by the window and open it up?”

Deputy Aubrey Cross looks at him incredulously.

“Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna try and escape. I just wanna make sure I got my ringside seat set up for the hangin’. Let me introduce you, Mr. Elm. You know who I am. The big man is Deputy Guy Clayton. The girl is Deputy Aubrey Cross. Yeah, a girl lawman. Watch out, she’s as strong and tough as any dude I ever tussled with.”

“He only says that cuz I wrestled him to the floor when he tried to escape.”

“I’m surprised, but thankful that you're up at dawn, Mr. Horton,” Joshua says.

With a glint in his eyes, Cade replies, “Always been an early riser. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. I was still prowlin’ the streets at dawn. Usually went to bed around eight in the mornin.’

Joshua sits in the chair by the window, taking a quick look at the gallows set up to hang the Ames and Statler brothers.

“I was born in New Orleans…”

“That explains your larcenous heart,” Aubrey chimes in.

“Who’s tellin’ the story, girlie? My Daddy was a riverboat gambler, so he had no use for me. I only saw him when he was tired of runnin’ with other women and came home to Momma to make another baby. Momma relied on the generosity of other men, if you get my drift, so I didn’t get to spend much time with her neither. I was a gadabout. I ran with street criminals. I started out by stealin’ a chicken. That was some fine eatin’. Then I stole a watch. Then I graduated to banks. My gangs have robbed more banks and made more money than Jesse James, Sam Bass, and Butch Cassidy put together. And here I am, twenty-eight and the toast of the West.”

“When we slam you behind bars, you’ll become a ghost in the West,” Aubrey retorts. “I wish you were takin’ the last walk with the rest of the varmints, and so does everybody else in Cockerville. You’ve made us drink from the well of sorrow for too long.”

“Just ‘cause you had a hand in bringin’ me to heel, girlie, that don’t give you the right to sass me.”

Joshua’s attention shifts to Aubrey.

“So, what I heard was true.”

“She used her feminine wiles to trap me,” Cade complains.

“I’m going to make you famous, Miss Cross. I’m going to tell people about the smart, dogged lady law officer with the big hat and the big heart who brought down the fearsome Cade Horton with just a wink and a smile. There’ll be little girls and women looking up to you throughout the country.”

“I’ll settle for the five-thousand-dollar reward. I just wanna quietly mosey off into the sunset and start a ranch.”

Joshua turns back to Cade, who is slathering jelly on his toast.

“What do you want to tell people who say you’re an evil man?”

“There’s bad in all of us. I just got an extra helpin’. I done what I did to live above bend and to make a name for myself. What I done ain’t gonna better the world, but it is what it is. I’ll be remembered.”

“But it all started to go wrong here in Cockerville.”

“Sure enough. Big Red Beard scouted the town for us. What we didn’t know was he double-crossed us and told Marshal Winchester we was gonna rob the bank...”

***

Big Red Beard rides into Cade Horton’s camp at dawn. Bulky with a shock of red hair and a reddish mustache, Big Red has lived in Cockerville all his life and knows everyone’s daily routines.

Cade and his six men are sitting around a campfire, eating breakfast. The trigger-happy Ames brothers, twenty-three-year-old Ed and eighteen-year-old Leon, fiddle with their weapons. Calculating Press LaMocha, the oldest of the gang at thirty, sips his coffee, eyeing Big Red suspiciously, while twenty-year-old Reid Statler, nineteen-year-old DeWitt Statler, and twenty-two-year-old Flapjack Morrison ravenously dig into their plates.

“The bank is empty, right?” Cade asks Big Red.

“Yep. The bank president and his tellers is havin’ breakfast at Millie’s just like they do every mornin’ before they open up. The lady deputy is the only law on duty. Marshal Winchester and Deputy Clayton ain’t due to start work until nine. Most of the other folks in town is still home in bed.”

“Fine. We’ll leave our horses in the alley next door to the bank and break in through the back door. Ed, Leon, Press, and Flapjack, you stand guard. The Statlers and me’ll blow the safe. Then we skeedaddle clean as a whistle.”

***

Ed Ames casually leans over the hitching post outside the bank, while Leon Ames and Flapjack scan the street. Press LaMocha stands close to the wall in the alley, watching the sun rise while trying to dismiss his mistrust of Big Red.

None of them notices the rifle poking out of the general store window across the street.

An alarm sounds as Cade and the Statler brothers enter the bank.

DeWitt jumps. “I thought Big Red told you this bank didn’t have an alarm.”

“We should make him pay for lying to us,” Reid says grimly.

“We will. But for now, I need you to work quick, boys.”

The loud report from the exploding safe brings a dozen armed men out of their hiding places.

A rain of bullets fired from the general store hit Flapjack, and he falls over, dead. Another bullet grazes Leon’s hip. He and Ed fire at the men pouring out of the store, wounding one man and instantly killing another.

“Tim to cut and run!” Leon yells.

Ed and Leon fire indiscriminately up and down the street, killing three men charging at them.

The Ames brothers retreat down the alley.

The Statlers rush out of the bank, making for their horses.

Slowed by the weight of three sacks of money, Cade is the last man to leave the bank.

Marshal Tully Winchester and his two deputies set up across the street outside the general store, waiting for the Horton gang to exit the alley.

Firing his pistol, Press LaMocha rides out of the alley with a jubilant yell, hellbent on escaping. Bullets ping off the buildings behind him. Taking aim with her rifle, Deputy Aubrey Cross hits Press in the back of his head, knocking his corpse off his horse.

The Ames brothers and the Statler brothers ride out, firing wildly.

Six-year-old Daisy Fortune stands at the second-story window of the Hotel Blithedale, casually watching the battle. A stray bullet from Ed Ames’s revolver passes through Daisy’s eye, burying itself in the wall behind her.

Ed is hit in the arm and leg. Leon takes a round of buckshot in the back, and a bullet passes through DeWitt Statler’s calf. Only Reid is left unscathed.

Bloodied, but still alive, the men escape in a cloud of dust.

Their bloodlust up, a crowd of men advances down the alley.

Leaving his horse and two bags of money behind, Cade slips through a narrow passageway at the back of the alley. Emerging two streets away at the undertaker’s office, he steals a mule tied up in front of the building.

***

“Quite a tale,” Joshua says. “And Marshall Winchester and you two deputies tracked the gang for fifty miles.”

“All we had to do was follow the trail of blood,” Deputy Guy Clayton says grimly.

“So, how did you find Cade?” Joshua asks Aubrey.

“Word got back to us that some slick in Porterville was throwin’ his money around, losing big at the Faro table.”

“I knew I should have put that money in the bank,” Cade mutters.

“So, I took on the disguise of a painted lady and accidentally bumped into Horton at the gamblin’ house. I let him get good and liquored up. When he went for his money, I went for the gun I had stuffed in my purse. I’ll always cherish the other gambler’s laughter as I led him out in handcuffs.”

“I should’a knowed she was a snake. She smokes like a funeral pyre.”

“So how come you’re not going to follow your friends up the steps to the scaffold this morning?” Joshua asks.

“In exchange for his own hide, the mastermind told us where his gang was hidin’,” Aubrey says snidely.

“You double-crossed your friends?”

“Wait a minute, pard. I figured we could all get a good lawyer, do a little time, and get back to business. Might have worked, too, if Ed Ames hadn’t skulled that girl by accident. Folks’ll excuse most anythin’, ‘cept shootin’ a child.”

“Horton played it fast and loose when it became obvious that they’d all swing,” Aubrey says. “He got his own lawyer and managed to wrangle a separate trial. The judge swallowed Horton’s malarky that he was regretful. Forget about the eight men he’s killed. So, he gets twenty years, while his boys get their necks broke.”

***

Joshua watches the hangman cover the pair of brothers’ heads with hoods. He hears Ed Ames lament, “I didn’t mean to kill that little girl,” above the murmur of the crowd.

The hangman pulls the lever, and the four men drop. Ed Ames is the last to die, kicking and gagging, making Joshua wonder if his rope had been loosened to make him suffer more than the others.

Joshua looks up at the hotel window. Cade Horton looks down at his dangling friends without an ounce of regret.

***

Deputy Guy Clayton puts his shotgun down to answer the knock on the door.

Daisy Fortune’s grief-stricken father, Fergal, pokes him in the chest with a rifle.

“Don’t give me any trouble, Guy. The way I feel could make me forget we’re friends.”

“You should always look out for your friends,” Cade says.

“Fine talk coming from the likes of you.”

“Lookie here, Fergal, I didn’t shoot your child.”

“It was your plan that brought you and your gang here. The rest of them have paid in full. Now it’s your turn.”

Fergal looks around the room. “Where’s Aubrey?”

“Behind you, Fergal. So, do us both a favor and drop the rifle.”

Cade chuckles triumphantly. “Where you been?”

“I went outside for a smoke.”

“Bless that manly bad habit of yours, girlie.”

***

The clock above the Traveler’s hits midnight with no end to the excessive drinking in sight.

Colin Colquitt, the owner of the general store, buys a drink for Finneas Fortune, Fergal’s older brother.

“Sorry ‘bout your niece, Fin.”

“I won’t be happy ‘til that snake Horton’s as dead as a can of corned beef,” Finneas replies, running his hands through his thick hair. “Daisy had a bright life ahead’a her. She could cipher. Hell, she was readin’ books adults couldn’t understand at the age of six! Ed Ames went to hell regrettin’ what he’d done, but I ain’t heard one ‘sorry’ or a hint of guilt from Horton. He’s been raidin’ this town for years. Every time he shows up, somebody dies. It’s time we return the favor.”

Colin raises his glass. “I agree. We should balance the scales.”

Finneas lifts his glass. “To Daisy!”

The men turn to salute Fergal, who passed out in a river of tears and whiskey the hour before.

Surveying the saloon, Joshua sits down at the table with the most sober occupants.

He asks an ancient, grizzled, bleary-eyed man, “Do you think it’s fair that Cade Horton is getting twenty years?”

“He should have danced on the end of a rope with the rest of ‘em. You know they tried to hang him early on in Montana years ago, and it didn’t stick then neither. Right, Vic?”

A young, long-faced man with sad eyes nods in agreement.

“He and his partner was caught with the take from the Butte First National Bank. They strung ‘em both up,” Vic says. “His captors were so excited to be rid of him that when they rode off, they fired their guns in the air in celebration. One of the shots nicked the rope that was strangling Horton, and it snapped, saving him. His partner wasn’t so lucky. But what Horton did to Marshal Winchester was worse.”

“What do you mean?”

Vic calls out to Marshal Tully Winchester, who is standing at the bar.

He turns around, swigging from a glass of beer. Some of the suds get caught in his generous, inky black beard. As Tully staggers to the table, Joshua can tell the sad-eyed Marshal is very drunk.

“I thought you’d be guarding the prisoner.”

“Aubrey’s on it. She’s the only one who can stomach Horton, and she keeps him in line.”

“The boys here say you share a history with Cade.”

“Four years ago, he come rollin’ in here with a stolen bankroll. He took a shine to a local girl. Meant nothin’ to Horton that she was married to my brother, Hayden. He beat my brother up and threatened to kill him. Horton backed down some when I stepped in. But that wasn’t the end of it. Hayden went out one mornin’ to milk their cow. He was gonna give the milk to his starvin’ neighbor’s kids. Hayden’s wife found him layin’ down face-first in the field. You know what the worst part was? My brother was a man of God, a preacher.”

Marshal Winchester downs his glass.

“I had the pleasure of arrestin’ that cur. But I got called to Santa Fe to testify in a trial. I left my deputies in charge. When I got back, I needed new deputies…”

***

“Hey, deputy! I gotta use the privy!”

Cade smiles cordially as Deputy Dean Chance takes off his handcuffs and the iron chains binding his feet.

Deputy Chance leads Cade by the elbow out the back door of the jailhouse.

Cade quickly turns, slamming Chance in his ribs. As Chance doubles up in pain, Cade pulls his gun from its holster. He presses it against the side of Chance’s head, firing,

Deputy Sylvian Waddle leaves the Blithedale Hotel with a tray of dinner for the prisoner. He drops the tray when he hears gunfire, rushing back to the jailhouse. Thrusting the door open, he’s confronted by Cade, who points a gun at him.

“You’re late with my dinner, Sylvain,” Cade says, pumping three bullets into him.

***

“He escaped, and he had the brass to come back to Cockerville?” Joshua asks. “Sounds like he should have been hung a long time ago.”

“You won’t find a man in here who’ll disagree,” Vic says.

“He has plenty of stolen cash to spread around,” Marshal Winchester mumbles. “The judge for Hayden’s murder trial let Horton off. Then he bought himself a show horse, a keg of whiskey, and God knows what else. Yeah, Horton should have been hanged a long time ago. But justice will be done. I’m takin’ him to the penitentiary in Santa Fe so he can rot for twenty years. We’re leavin’ on the train at dawn if you care to see us off.”

***

Picking up his valise, Joshua leaves the Blithedale Hotel, yawning as he passes through the door and into the street.

Looking into the sun as it rises, he sees Marshal Winchester standing with a group of people applauding and laughing near the gallows.

He shields his eyes from the sun and looks up.

Cade Horton is hanging from the end of a rope.

“What happened here?” Joshua asks Marshal Winchester.

“I’d say he missed his train.”